Internal Motivation
Most actors will agree that motivation is vital if you want to truly commit believably to any spoken line, action or character need. Well, here’s a secret that you won’t learn in most acting classes:
Your motivation to play the Intention is never a variation of the Intention, but rather a pain, fear, panic, hurt, insecurity, or self-doubt that gives a life context to the Intention and then demands that you play it. So if, for example, you want “To eviscerate the bastard,” you’d better get in touch with the pain of losing your murdered sister right before you do the scene. Another example: if you want “To win her over,” you better get in touch with your feelings of being alone and unloved first. Those motivational feelings are created in the emotional preparation (see Section VI: Life Support) right before the scene and almost force you to play the Intention. If you truly NEED to play that intention, you’ll be forever fascinating to watch.
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Testimonials
"Most acting classes offer scene study and critique, but it is much more unusual to run into someone who is willing and able to guide the actor through several scenes from a feature-length script, with cameras, in order to create the experience of developing a character in a real film. This difference has clearly made a difference — at least if the performances I observed at Maravilla are any indications. The talent on display was noticeable, but even more impressive was the discipline, as well as the strong sense of an entire cast and crew working as a team. Come to think of it, the best analogy would be to an actual film set, which is, I suppose, the point."Donelan
The SB Independent